


On The Right Foot

by butterfing_ers



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Band Fic, Fluff, How Do I Tag, M/M, Mentioned Jeon Wonwoo, Mentioned Kim Mingyu, Non AU, One Shot, Please Don't Hate Me, Seventeen - Freeform, jeongcheolsoo, meanie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-20 23:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11345586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterfing_ers/pseuds/butterfing_ers
Summary: Mingyu leaves a path of destruction in his wake, in the footsteps he leaves behind; and yet Wonwoo trails after him, unfazed and unafraid.





	On The Right Foot

Wonwoo doesn't know what was running through his mind when he accidentally stepped on the broken shards of the glass that Mingyu also accidentally dropped. He was surprised himself when he felt something poking him, and it was only when he heard Seungkwan's alarmed voice that the faint stab of pain registered in him.

" _Hyung_!" he heard Seungkwan say as he lifted his foot away from the estranged piece of glass. "Ow," he said out loud hugging his one knee towards his chest so that it was a hundred percent far away from it, then he can hear Mingyu's almost exaggerated gasp, by which Wonwoo guesses that he must have looked back from his journey to getting the dustpan and the broom, meaning Mingyu saw the aftermath of his little mishap. Seungkwan helps Wonwoo to the nearest chair. Soon, Seungkwan, Mingyu, and the others who were already awake were crouching in front of Wonwoo. There is an urge erupting in Wonwoo, calling out for him to make a joke seemingly suited for their current situation. " _Ya_ , I predicted this: you peasants crouching at my feet! Dictator Wonwoo for the win!” he wants to say out loud, reminiscing memories made during their One Fine Day in Japan when he was able to practice absolute power as a ruthless dictator for a day — but he shuts it down when Mingyu's "Oh my gosh, Wonwoo- _hyung_ , I'm so sorry. Oh my gosh, _eotteoke_!" echoes in the confines of their dorm with a look of guilt seemingly immortalized on his face.

The minute stream of blood is warm against the pad of his foot, and Wonwoo feels like it's going to cake soon. "I'm going to get the first-aid kit," Seungcheol offers, "And you, Mingyu, you're going to clean up the mess you made before anyone else decides to act like an idiot," he orders him. Wonwoo rolls his eyes heavenward with Seungcheol's words. He was then helped by Seungkwan and Minghao to the bathroom to wash off his wound with tap water and soap.

“It's quite a long gash; does it hurt?" Jisoo asks in his honey voice when he applies light pressure on it. Wonwoo nods and watches in silence as some members help him in treating his minor injury. Seungcheol tutts in disbelief and glances at Mingyu's fidgeting beside him, then he glances up at Wonwoo. "You of all people should already know better than to follow this oversized puppy around," he tells him. "I heard that!" Mingyu says. "I know, I was just following him aimlessly..." Wonwoo answers quietly, embarrassment eating him up. He could almost feel the blush creeping to his cheeks. What was he thinking, walking around, being distracted by Mingyu's bed hair? Which is exactly why he pursued Mingyu literally awhile ago. But there was no way in the world he was going to admit that, so Wonwoo being Wonwoo, kept his face impervious and unbothered. "Plus, it's morning. I was disoriented," Wonwoo adds when Seungcheol and Jun scoffs at his initial answer. "It's too early to think," he says, trying to convince them and himself as well, justifying his idiotic gap just a few minutes awhile ago. "Still, you should see where you're stepping on," Seungcheol says good-naturedly before he goes off to wake up the rest of the members. "Or else you might get hurt," Jun tells him, giving the bandage wrapped around his foot one last tug, Jisoo patting it softly. Despite being words and sentences that can be heard of everyday, Wonwoo keeps it in the back of his mind.

Wonwoo tries to put some weight on his right foot, the injured one, when he gets up, only to crumble back down when he feels the sting crawl up his calf. He winces noticeably, Mingyu catching the expression on his face. Wonwoo almost feels bad for unintentionally burdening Mingyu with guilt, so he tries to soothe it somewhat by saying something like "It's okay, don't worry about it," but Mingyu beats him to the bush. " _Hyung_ , I'll make it up to you! I'll treat you to dinner later, let's go out!" Mingyu says enthusiastically, determined to make it up to Wonwoo, not even giving the latter a chance to protest (but it's not like he will, anyway). Again, Wonwoo almost feels bad for putting them both in this kind of situation. _Almost_.

  
Wonwoo is rendered incapable throughout the rest of day, which equals to him sitting out the dance practices, which equals to him literally sitting it out on one corner of their dance studio. Since they were going through a new dance routine, Wonwoo was asked to take notes a.k.a. to watch intensely; the book he brought in with high hopes of reading lay discarded and was reduced to being a butt cushion. He watched on as Soonyoung led along with Jun, Minghao, and Chan supervising the members. He imagines all of their sweat wicking straight to him, and he imagines he can hear the faint plop of some droplets as they fall in contact to the floor.

After they were able to grasp hold of the first formation, they were given a break. Wonwoo scooted over to leave some space for the members who sat with him, their backs against the innate coldness of the mirror. “ _Hyung_ , I’m really sorry,” Mingyu says who seats himself at the vacant space beside him. “How many times do I have to tell you that it’s okay?” Wonwoo replies with a chuckle. He looks over to him, and the laugh that erupts out of Wonwoo chokes him instead at the sight of Mingyu eyeing his bandaged foot morosely. “Stop that, you’re making me feel bad, besides it doesn’t hurt that much anymore,” Wonwoo says, nudging Mingyu. Mingyu relaxes and leans slightly against Wonwoo, a comfortable silence resting over them.

After a brief while of bumping shoulders with one another, Jeonghan comes over and squats in front of them. “Tsk. Mingyu, how could you?” he teases him. “Does it hurt, Wonwoo?” Jeonghan asks flicking his head towards him. Wonwoo catches the sly wink and the mischievous glint in Jeonghan’s eye. “Yeah _hyung_.” He goes along with what Jeonghan wants to happen. Jisoo appears beside Jeonghan and he tutts as well. “It must have been _super_ painful,” Jisoo says, putting emphasis on ‘super,’ “I mean, when Jun and I were bandaging his foot awhile ago, he kept on squinting his eyes and scrunching his nose as if it _really really_ hurt.” Jeonghan was now twirling Wonwoo’s right foot around and around for added effects. Mingyu’s squirming in his seat now. “Yeah, ouch, _hyung_ , even the slightest touch can feel painful, ow hey!” Wonwoo says. “What? But you told me it didn’t hurt anymore just awhile ago, though?” Mingyu says, the volume of his voice growing soft as if he was unsure of his words as well. It was true that it didn’t hurt anymore, heck, Wonwoo can even put some pressure on it now and he can even walk slowly, but it was fun to watch Mingyu’s facial expressions distort while he was being teased. Wonwoo puts on a deadpan look as he stares at Mingyu straight in the eyes and says, “I lied.” He can see from his peripheral view that Jeonghan and Jisoo were struggling to keep their mouths shut, but fortunately, they were called by Seungcheol. “You two! What are you doing! Don’t scare the little boy!” he scolds them, when he reaches the squatting duo. The two of them stand up beside Seungcheol who was surveying Wonwoo’s pseudo-pitiful state, when Seungcheol says, “Now, Wonwoo, I’m glad to see to see that you’ve stopped crying.” Wonwoo nods in a trance. Mingyu was now kneeling, looking at Wonwoo with an appaled expression, “ _Ya hyung_! You cried?!” On normal circumstances, Wonwoo would’ve rolled his eyes and scoffed at the idea of crying over something as trivial like this; but they were on a roll so he decided to go along with the evil _hyungs_ who looked determined to get a rise out of Mingyu. “Oh he did! When you were getting the dustpan and the broom. His wound was still fresh then, oh I could only imagine the pain of stepping on a sharp piece of broken glass…” Seungcheol answers him letting his voice trail off. “Sorry Wonwoo- _hyung_! I’m so sorry!” Mingyu says out loud garnering the attention of the other members who were resting. Seungcheol grabs the opportunity and claps, “Okay kids! Break’s over!” Seungcheol, Jeonghan, and Jisoo walk away from them giving each other high-fives for their successful tease-fest. The other members soon resumed their positions.

Wonwoo’s gaze is focused on Mingyu, who is dominating the center position for their second formation. Despite his looks, he was surprisingly naïve. Wonwoo bets that Mingyu believed the short skit with the hyungs. Ah, I’m such a great actor, he says to himself. Besides being completely gullible (although he was not entirely at par with Dokyeom’s naiveté), he was also extremely butterfingered. There was a time while they were shooting their Check-In MV in Hong Kong, when Mingyu was able to literally befriend a dog being walked by its owner. The dog was on Mingyu’s lap, and Mingyu was playing with it, when Mingyu decided to stand up abruptly seemingly forgetting the pup in his lap, thus the dog fell over, whining. He bowed and apologized profusely to its owner and the dog, to which the owner laughed and accepted with a good heart, even entertained at Mingyu’s cute antics. Wonwoo stopped thinking about it as soon as the image of Mingyu’s orange mane burned, rather, scorched his retinas, undoubtedly bright like the sun. There were also multiple times wherein he magically loses his mic during music broadcasts, and even more instances of him almost or completely dropping props, awards, and trophies alike. He unintentionally breaks stuff; sometimes, without him knowing. Wonwoo is dumbfounded at the mystery of Kim Mingyu, of how the traits of one person can easily cancel out their own: like how Mingyu was quite naïve and idiotic, even though he was really smart and tactical; like how he practically leaves a trail of destruction because of his clumsiness, and how he still manages to retrace his steps to fix it. He was like SEVENTEEN’s own personal Fix-it-Felix-Jr., despite being a Wreck-It-Ralph himself as well. He was indeed the boy who can do anything (it even aroused a rumor that Mingyu was actually a robot). These were probably Mingyu’s charms, it’s honestly endearing, Wonwoo thinks to himself, growing all the more amazed; however, Wonwoo is even more astounded by the fact that he likes someone like Mingyu. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” someone next to him whispers to his ear, snapping Wonwoo out of his own thoughts. “You scared me!” he says as Jihoon scurries over to his vacated position. Apparently, Jihoon came from being excused to the rest room. Wonwoo smiles to himself as he realizes he must have been staring. He sends off a mental note of gratitude to Jihoon.

  
Nighttime soon descended upon the skies of Seoul, dismissing their practice, calling for them to rest. Wonwoo guesses that he might be able to join them tomorrow. He makes himself useful by passing some fresh towels and bottles of water to the members. They make their way back to the dorm, reliving some funny snippets that happened during practice and bestowing the burden of being teased upon Mingyu. Wonwoo walks behind them all, movements still slow as applying normal pressure stings just a bit. He is assisted by Jihoon and Jun. “Seokmin was like this,” then Seungkwan imitates Seokmin when he was doing an adlib awhile ago, “– then he did something like this,” Seungkwan changes position as Hansol seal claps his back, and soon, everyone was laughing. “No, it was like this! I saw it! High-def!” Wonwoo interjects before exaggerating Seokmin's movements. All of them turn towards him and laugh. “Wonwoo- _hyung_ , how’s your foot?” Minghao pipes up. A series of whispers can be heard from the 97-liners who were comically walking side-by-side. “It’s better—“ then Wonwoo is cut off by Jeonghan, who flashes him a what-are-you-doing look as they pass a streetlight, “I mean, ouch!” he says and slows down his walking on purpose. “Ha! I’m right! It’s still painful!” Minghao exclaims to which Mingyu and Dokyeom reply in a chorus, “ _Ya_ , not again.” The three 97-liners made a bet about his minor injury. Wonwoo wants to say sorry to the both who lost against Minghao, when in reality it was Minghao who lost. “ _Hyung_ , I’m really sorry!” Mingyu calls out to him and suddenly, the members are pushing Mingyu towards the back, towards Wonwoo. “If you really are, then act like it!” they unanimously tease him. Mingyu replaces Jun and Jihoon with almost no effort, and places his hand tentatively on Wonwoo’s waist. “Drop him if the grandpa jokes become too much,” Jun says to Mingyu before tapping his shoulder, then the both of Wonwoo’s fellow 96-liners walk ahead of them. They lag behind the group in silence. There is a rupture of butterflies inside Wonwoo’s stomach. It won’t hurt if he leans his weight just a bit more towards Mingyu, won’t it? He asks himself but still does it the end. He wishes for the blush on the surface of his cheeks to go away when they reach their dorm, afraid that the lights will make it visible. Much to his dismay, it didn’t. “Wonwoo- _hyung_ , your cheeks are pink,” Mingyu points out the obvious as he’s arranging their shoes. As if I don’t know, he wants to answer, but a lame excuse flows out of him. “It was cold,” he says. “Was it?” Mingyu wonders at him innocently. Wonwoo can feel his cheeks grow hotter and he decides he can’t take it when Mingyu looks up at him like this. It makes him want to step on him. So Wonwoo being Wonwoo, sidesteps the puppy looking up at him, and runs up the stairs, forgetting his injured foot for a couple of seconds. He can feel Mingyu’s confused eyes behind him, boring into the back of head.

  
A few minutes of prettifying and freshening up ensue before Mingyu and Wonwoo decide to leave. Jeonghan takes it to himself to help Wonwoo down the flight of stairs, and he winks at him after, and subtly whispers: “Make him suffer,” before laughing, intending for a joke. “Buy us chips and cola, _hyung_!” Chan calls out behind them to which Mingyu flashes a thumbs up. The bustle and hustle of Seoul was walkable from their dorm, and so they did. They wore disguises, of course, both of them wore caps even if it was already 8 pm with the sun nowhere to be seen. They settled on a café that only had about four customers inside. They seated themselves at the farthest end, to which no bypasser or window shopper could see from the glass windows adorning the front of the shop.

“I’m really sorry, _hyung_ ,” Mingyu sincerely tells him for the nth time. Wonwoo looks up from his plate and swallows before saying a worn out, “How many times do I have to tell you that it’s okay? Don’t say sorry anymore,” he answers him. “Oh, sorry –“ Mingyu starts but Wonwoo looks at him with his ice-cold stare jokingly. “What did I say?” he asks, folding his hands underneath his chin. “To stop saying sorry?” Mingyu replies, his mouth full of food. “Yeah, so stop,” Wonwoo orders him, “I’m getting tired of your voice,” he jokes. Mingyu acts as if an arrow pierced his heart as he leans back against the cushion and mimics a hurt expression. “Ouch, _hyung_! That was painful!” he says, sending some specks of masticated food flying towards Wonwoo. He shakes his head disbelievingly, “ _Aish jinja_ , this kid has no manners!” he says wiping his face with a tissue, then he leafs through what Mingyu said. “Not as painful as stepping on broken glass, though.” “Touché.” And they both laugh.

They were window shopping in the night markets of Seoul, when Mingyu decides to strike up a conversation. “ _Hyung_ , today… I caught you staring at me,” he says slowly. Wonwoo’s eyes almost popped out of his face. He was glad that they were walking beside each other so that means Mingyu can’t see his face. “What made you say that?” he says cooly, acting as if he didn’t know was Mingyu was speaking of despite of it being completely true. “Because I was staring at you as well,” Mingyu answers nonchalantly as if it was nothing to him, and Wonwoo can’t help but look up at the man beside him. “Liar, you were looking at yourself in the mirror the whole time!” Wonwoo blurts out, but immediately regrets it after he realized he gave himself away. “So you were staring at me,” Mingyu says matter-of-factly, with a tone completely confident. “That because, uh, that’s because…” Wonwoo was running out of witty comebacks, and his cheeks were burning up, and he has got to divert Mingyu’s attention away from that instance before he thinks of it deeper, but Mingyu beats him to it. “Huh _hyung_? Why were you staring at me? You like me, don’t you?” Wonwoo’s lack of answer made the air around them more uncomfortable. Damn you, Kim Mingyu! Always making me feel embarrassed! He exasperatedly thinks to himself. He wants to answer a snarky “So what of it?” because Wonwoo’s a closet-tsundere and it would make him appear aloof and unbothered, but then again, Mingyu was an expert in beating Wonwoo to the curb and making him feel all the more embarrassed. “Well, I like you too,” Mingyu confesses and drops a bomb on Wonwoo. What? Wonwoo wants to shout, but the silence around them settles into something comfortable and soothing, and Wonwoo feels content. Wonwoo doesn’t even try to deny Mingyu’s inference, after all, he was caught red-handedly. They’re bumping shoulders and eventually Wonwoo finds the courage to entwine his fingers with Mingyu. A multitude of words and lyrics surge out from between them as Mingyu squeezes back. The silence is okay, Wonwoo muses; there are no words needed, but he lets out a few. “Looks like we started on the right foot, huh?” Wonwoo whispers with his voice pitched extra low so that only Mingyu can hear it. “Try saying another joke,” Mingyu whispers back, swinging their linked arms, “– and I’ll drop you, I swear,” he jokes eliciting a hearty laugh from Wonwoo.

  
Wonwoo didn’t even expect to get a confession from the guy whose hand he was holding right now, he thinks as they walk hand-in-hand, on the way back to their dorm. He wonders what reactions will they get from the members. They’ll probably be happy, they pair us all the time, he thinks to himself. Thinking of the members had him thinking about what Seungcheol and Jun told him awhile ago. It was something out of concern because of his little accident in the morning, but Wonwoo can’t help but think about it now. They were right. He has to look where his feet will land, he has to look at the waters he’s treading. He has to, or else he’ll get hurt. Unable to keep it to himself, he thought out loud. “What if you break me?” he asks in a small voice, silently praying that Mingyu won’t hear it, but he does. Mingyu looks at him, his cap low on his forehead but Wonwoo can see that Mingyu’s eyes are full of him when he answers, “Then I’ll fix you.”

  
Wonwoo is literally humming now, and their dorm can be seen, only about two blocks ahead. Mingyu looks at him fondly, sometimes even singing along to the song he’s humming. Mingyu stops walking, dragging Wonwoo along with him as he halts directly under the streetlight. They stand quietly, both of them illuminated under it. Mingyu is incandescent under their very own makeshift spotlight, and it does so little to irradiate his godlike looks. Wonwoo marvels at how lucky he is today, tonight, and tomorrow; he feels Mingyu tightening his hold around his hand.

 _"Hyung_ ,” Mingyu calls him, and Wonwoo looks up at him, anticipating what he’ll say or do. He can almost hear the reverberating thump of his heartbeats clearly now, as Wonwoo watches Mingyu part his lips. “We forgot to buy them chips and cola.”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I only have two words: I'm sorry.
> 
> Cutesy fics aren't really my thing so I'm sorry if this wasn't to your expectation; but nonetheless, I enjoyed writing this and I hope you did so too in reading!


End file.
